Friday

John San Felice vividly remembers the longest 40 minutes of his life. He sat enveloped in suffocating fear, waiting for a police officer to come to his door to tell him his daughter was dead.

John San Felice vividly remembers the longest 40 minutes of his life. He sat enveloped in suffocating fear, waiting for a police officer to come to his door to tell him his daughter was dead.

San Felice, a Beaver Falls native who graduated from high school in 1963, said he was paralyzed by fear, doubt and uncertainty on the afternoon of June 28.

During those 40 minutes, his 23-year-old daughter, Selene, was hiding under a desk in the Capital Gazette newsroom as a deranged gunman killed five of her colleagues. She’d worked at the paper as a reporter for less than a year.

John San Felice’s voice cracked Friday when talking about those 40 minutes. His daughter had managed to call him while the shooting was unfolding, but the conversation didn’t last long.

“She whispered and said that she loved me and told me what was happening,” San Felice said Friday from his home in Millersville, Maryland. “She saw John McNamara get shot, the sports editor. And then I didn’t hear anything for about 40 minutes. I was paralyzed.”

By the time the atrocity had ended in Annapolis, Maryland, five Capital Gazette staff members were dead and many others traumatized by what they had seen. In the 40 minutes between that first phone call and the next time they talked, John San Felice sat waiting for a police officer to come to the door to tell him the worst.

Instead of a police officer telling him his daughter was gone, he got quite the opposite. It was the police who delivered her back to him.

“The police had a one-minute response time,” he said. “They saved her life.”

When San Felice and his wife finally reunited with their daughter, it was after police had interviewed Selene San Felice in the criminal investigations unit of the Anne Arundel County Police Department.

“It was so wonderful, being able to put my arms around her and hold her,” he said Friday.

His daughter has found it difficult to talk in-depth about the tragedy.

“She did see people get shot, her friends,” San Felice said. “When the guy started shooting, she and an intern tried running out the back door, but the perpetrator had barricaded the back door so they couldn’t get out.”

The situation didn’t get much better in the following days. San Felice said he and his family were inundated by national news reporters, and his daughter’s words were taken out of context during interviews.

“It’s been hell since the day this happened,” he said. “It’s just totally disrupted our lives.”

It was Selene San Felice who, caught in the moment of her emotions, uttered a profanity while speaking to Anderson Cooper on CNN. She said she didn’t “give a (expletive)” about peoples’ prayers if they didn’t result in action.

“If your help ends at thoughts and prayers, I don’t want them. What I want is action,” Selene San Felice wrote in a column published in the Capital Gazette earlier this week.

The response to her comments were atrocious, John San Felice said. His daughter has received death threats, hate mail and harassment from people who assumed she was being critical of President Donald Trump.

“(U.S. Sen.) Marco Rubio even wrote a very nasty comment on Twitter toward her,” he said. “Then he got lambasted for that; I was so happy.”

Despite all of the hurt, pain and trauma, there have been positives. San Felice said his daughter and several of her co-workers have been camping at his house, using it as a retreat of sorts while they process the tragedy.

There have been counseling, shared tears and even a visit from the Stanley Cup to the Capital Gazette’s temporary offices.

There were vigils, memorials and a very emotional Fourth of July parade. San Felice said he’s been trying hard to track down the first six police officers who stormed into the Capital Gazette newsroom, apprehended the shooter and saved his daughter’s life.

It’s been a traumatizing experience for himself, his family and the community. But John San Felice hasn’t lost faith.

“The people of Annapolis, they’ve come out and surrounded (Capital Gazette staffers) with love and open arms. There’s been more good than bad. Much more good than bad.”

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